SENTINEL
Docs/Quick Start
Getting Started

Quick Start

Overview

Sentinel provides cryptographic identity and trust verification for autonomous machines. This guide walks you through setup in under five minutes.

Prerequisites

  • •A Sentinel account (request access)
  • •Terminal access (macOS, Linux, or WSL on Windows)
  • •Node.js 18+ (for SDK usage)

Step 1 — Install the CLI

curl -fsSL https://get.sentinel.dev | sh

Verify the installation:

sentinel --version

Step 2 — Authenticate

sentinel auth login

This opens your browser for authentication. Once complete, your session token is stored locally at ~/.sentinel/credentials.

Step 3 — Initialize a project

sentinel init --project my-fleet

This generates a sentinel.yaml configuration file containing your project ID and API keys.

Important: Add sentinel.yaml to your .gitignore. Never commit credentials.

Step 4 — Register a device

sentinel register \
  --name unit-001 \
  --model forklift-v2 \
  --serial SN-2025-001

Output:

✓ Device registered
  ID:          clx8f2k...
  DID:         did:sentinel:0x7f3a...b2c1
  Trust Score: 100/100
  Status:      registered

Behind the scenes, Sentinel generates an Ed25519 keypair, derives a decentralized identifier (DID), and initializes the trust score.

Step 5 — Verify firmware (recommended)

sentinel verify firmware \
  --robot unit-001 \
  --version 2.4.1 \
  --file ./firmware.bin \
  --anchor

The --anchor flag stores an immutable proof on Solana. Without it, verification is stored off-chain only.

Next steps

Authentication